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It would be a mistake to include Shanghai Ghetto, a new documentary about German Jews who fled the Holocaust for the sanctuary of a very different hell in Shanghai circa 1939, in what has almost become a familiar genre of films detailing the horrors of World War II.
To the detriment of history and cinema, films about the Holocaust have almost become, in their narrative elements, routine. This by no means renders the alternately terrifying and heroic real-life stories to have any less merit as historical and cultural records. Though it seems of late, that in telling these stories for the screen, I've found them more familiar in their willingness to broadly paint familiar details of the usual atrocities, than to actually get inside their characters in a fresh or fascinating way.
Please don't get me wrong - I am in no way suggesting the events of the Holocaust are trivial - but exactly the opposite. Filmmakers need to find fresh angles to tell these stories, and more often than not, they rely on our built-in cultural pushbuttons rather than on telling original and compelling stories.
Shanghai Ghetto, by contrast, is a sometimes-fascinating documentary that at first glimpse appears to be about German Jews trapped in Germany at the dawn of World War II, gradually enveloped by a rising tide of hate. There's a good deal of suspense as to how these people are going to get out of Germany, and the film does a capable job of conveying the feeling that each passing day was to bring doom closer. The Jews tried everything to get out of their homeland, but found themselves at dead ends when every major country closed its doors. The situation was, by most accounts, hopeless.
But then the film does something interesting. Instead of remaining in Germany and following its documentary subjects to the Nazi death camps, it follows their true-life flight (narrated by Martin Landau) to a far away and temporarily safe haven: the Shanghai "ghetto," a divided, Chinese-occupied slum far removed from the excitement of Shanghai proper.
With direct to-the-camera interviews, the film recounts the detailed testimonials of children who lived in the cramped corner of the city with their parents and extended families, interwoven with academics that lend relevant historical context to the time and place.
We meet survivors who recount fascinating stories of new beginnings in a place that seemed like another planet to them, and how they integrated (or didn't) with the Chinese. We see their attempts to shelter their families and make a living, while living in fear of the Japanese Imperial Army whom they feared would invade the ghetto at any time.
Shanghai Ghetto is really the story of a society that was rebuilt in the harshest of circumstances. The German Jews in the ghetto, facing horrible living conditions, poverty and the constant threat of disease, were able to successfully re-colonize themselves, developing community, cultural and educational institutions in the midst of a downtrodden, squalor-ridden corner of the city. A city, which became increasingly hostile with the tensions of the war, culminating in the Allied bombing that took place against the Japanese.
But overall, for all its interest as a human story and for its sometimes- moving testimony, Shanghai Ghetto falls short as a successful film. It isn't rich or imaginative in any visual way, and remains rather pedestrian with a simplistic directorial style that emphasizes TV-like interviews intercut with archival photos and footage.
Late in the film some of the children make return trips to their childhood dwellings, and though it should be moving, it just seems rather perfunctory. The problem here is that the storytellers are simply not humanized much beyond having lived through awful circumstances. As viewers, we're expected to bring our sympathies to the table and easily access them. But something feels strangely flat and never truly compelling.
I'm not sure exactly why filmmakers Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir Mann thought this needed to be a theatrical film when it plays much more like a television documentary. There's certainly nothing cinematic or inventive about its form, and more often than not, the interviews feel static. In the end though the story itself is filled with true-life courage and tragedy that's historically relevant and even fascinating. But the filmmakers shortchange an opportunity to do something truly special by servicing these amazing stories with an antiseptic, History Channel-esque approach.
You can't help but be affected by the story. It's just the presentation that's a bit dull.
Good material. But the execution needs work.
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